Hello fellow MS'ers
It is a beautiful day today, and I hope all of you are well and pressing forward.
From time to time I will be sharing with you various research information that I come across as it pertains to African Americans and other people of color. I am including in this post some excerpts from and article on this topic:
Ethnic Groups and MS Research

Source: Neurology. 2010 Jul 20; 75(3):217-23. & PMID: 20644149 (28/07/10)
MS develops when myelin, the insulating tissue around neurons in the brain, is attacked by the body's own immune system. "The findings show that ethnic differences in multiple sclerosis extend to the immune response system, which plays a central role in multiple sclerosis," Dr. John R. Rinker, from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, said in a statement.

US Ethnic MS Study

A study, supported in part by the National MS Society, comparing the clinical characteristics of MS in African Americans and Caucasian Americans found significant differences between these two groups.
This study found that blacks with MS are more likely to experience a more aggressive course of disease, more likely to develop mobility impairments, and more likely to develop opticospinal MS and transverse myelitis.
While the disease is more likely to afflict Caucasians, it's showing up more and more in minorities. USC researchers hope discovering why minority cases are on the rise will eventually lead to a cure for everyone.
 African-Americans are more likely to have more destruction and a rapid escalation of symptoms. In Asians, the disease tends to affect the optical nerve and motor function.. And Latinos appear to experience a mix of the two.
Source: KABC Los Angeles 2010 KABC-TV/DT (14/05/10)
African/Americans with MS have more severe symptoms, decline faster than whites
Fewer African Americans than Caucasians develop multiple sclerosis (MS), statistics show, but their disease progresses more rapidly, and they don’t respond as to therapies, a study by neurology researchers at University at Buffalo.

Magnetic resonance images (MRI) of a cohort of 567 consecutive MS patients showed that blacks with MS had more damage to brain tissue and had less normal white and grey matter compared to whites with the disease. Results of the study appear in the Feb. 16 issue of the journal Neurology.
"Black patients showed more brain tissue damage and accumulated brain lesions faster than whites, along with rapid clinical deterioration," confirms Weinstock-Guttman. "The results provide further support that black patients experience a more severe disease, calling for individualised therapeutic interventions for this group of MS patients." 



"KNOWLEDGE IS POWER," the more knowledge  that we have about MS, the more control of our lives we will have. Know your enemy.

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